Nicole Mansfield

Nicole Mansfield (27 February 1980-29 May 2013) was an American member of the Al-Nusra Front/Ahrar ash-Sham who fought in the Syrian Civil War, dying while fighting the Syrian Arab Army in Idlib Governorate, the first American to die in the war.

Biography
Nicole Mansfield was born in Flint, Michigan, in the United States to a Christian Baptist family. She grew up watching NASCAR races, and lived a peaceful life at first. However, at 15 she was impregnated and she entered a series of relationships with Arab immigrants. Her relationships led her to convert to Islam and become a radical, and she believed that Israel oppressed people. In October 2007, she converted and in 2013 she headed to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and from there to Syria to fight in the Syrian Civil War against the Syrian Arab Republic. Mansfield fought with either the Al-Nusra Front (a branch of al-Qaeda) or their Ahrar ash-Sham allies, and she joined volunteers from Tunisia (whom she had met on the first leg of her journey to Syria) and the United Kingdom.

On 29 May 2013, Mansfield and two British nationals went on a reconaissance mission near the city of Idlib in Idlib Province, and they attempted to photograph Syrian military bases near the border with Turkey. Syrian forces discovered them, so they hurled grenades at the army. The soldiers fired back, killing all three of them, and they found ammunition clips, assault rifles, maps, and the Al-Nusra Front flag. She was the first American killed in the war.